TWA flight attendants deserve earned seniority restored before merger is approved

By Dixie Daniels, flight attendant - 03/14/13 04:00 PM ET

One of the great workforce injustices in aviation history occurred when the Association of Professional Flight Attendants at American Airlines (APFA), took unilateral action against the former TWA flight attendants by stripping them of all earned date of hire seniority from TWA.

In an interview with The Fort Worth Star Telegram, APFA President Laura Glading admitted APFA made a “mistake” and “screwed-up big time” by stapling the TWA members to the bottom of the seniority list. Ms. Glading has done nothing to remedy that mistake. APFA continues to cause direct financial harm to the former TWA attendants hoping they will retire or quit. Because the TWA attendants were laid off after 9/11 and unemployed for almost 10 years, they lost pension contributions, salary and benefits totaling more than $2 Billion. They must continue to work and many will until they are no longer physically able.

American recently offered a $40,000 lump sum buy-out to flight attendants. Over 2,250 accepted the offer. This company action provides the solution to the seniority problem that is simple and fair. There is no harm financially or otherwise to any current American flight attendant by integrating the remaining 950 former TWA members into their proper place on the seniority list now that 2,250 are departing. By the time 2,250 depart, every American flight attendant will move up the seniority list.
Congress must demand that DOJ, DOT, and Labor, require this solution before any merger is finalized. APFA should not jeopardize a merger when it can quickly remedy its own mistake and avoid litigation on seniority and other questionable actions to spite the TWA attendants.

The litany of APFA injustices is too long to fully recount. Former TWA flight attendant Amy Ludwig started flying in 1969 and timely applied for the $40,000 buyout. Amy had stage 4 ovarian cancer. Because she was deprived of her seniority from 1969 to the acquisition in 2001, she could not depart with the first group leaving in December 2012. She was assigned to depart in June 2013. She called APFA to ask if she could depart immediately because she might not survive until June. APFA responded “If you die before your departure date, you lose your money and your heirs will forfeit the money too.” Amy died December 18, 2012. Had she not been deprived of her seniority, she would have been one of the first to choose her departure date, not one of the last. APFA stopped the earned payout and Amy’s heirs have nothing.

To further disenfranchise the TWA flight attendants, APFA changed its constitution to require that furloughed employees pay full union dues. Because TWA was unemployed for years with little or no income, they accrued substantial arrearages. When they were recalled, APFA demanded that the dues be paid. Some owed well over a thousand dollars and most could not pay, placing the vast majority of TWA flight attendants in bad standing. This means that you are denied the right to vote in elections or contract offers, access information on the APFA website or go to Congress to voice your opinion.
Almost all the 950 TWA attendants who remain could not vote in the recent APFA election for president. That election was narrowly won by Ms. Glading by 150 votes in a runoff. The same Ms. Glading who said depriving TWA of seniority was a mistake that never should have happened. She would have been defeated by TWA votes and would not be representing APFA in the merger before Congress had she corrected the mistake.

American granted a 3% equity stake in the company to the APFA workforce upon emergence from bankruptcy. APFA devised a method to disenfranchise the TWA members. Ms. Glading made the motion to use a look-back period of W-2 earnings from American when all the TWA attendants were unemployed from American for some or all of the time. The result will give the TWA attendants an insignificant percentage of the distribution compared to those who were not laid off.

If APFA merges with the Association of Flight Attendants, (AFA) at US Airways, APFA insists that both groups receive their date of hire seniority. AFA is the largest flight attendant union in the country with over 60,000 members. The AFA president wrote to Chairman Rockefeller supporting the former TWA attendants and urged Congress to act because their own constitution recognizes that the date of hire is the only fair, impartial and blind way to merge seniority lists.

APFA is playing the clock to sweep their mistake that never should have happened under the rug. APFA knows the TWA attendants will be further damaged by being on the bottom of both carriers in the combined seniority list. The problem must be corrected to avoid workforce unrest that is detrimental to the newly merged company. TWA will be only 4% of the merged workforce. Congress must insist that APFA reverse its discrimination and admitted mistake or Congress will need to legislate an end to this discrimination that has caused so much pain to a small minority. Fix it now.

Daniels has been a TWA/AA flight attendant since 1973.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-a-budget/288193-twa-flight-attendants-deserve-earned-seniority-restored-before-merger-is-approved#ixzz2OxB5nQF1
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TWA flight attendants deserve earned seniority restored before merger is approved

By Dixie Daniels, flight attendant - 03/14/13 04:00 PM ET   

 

One of the great workforce injustices in aviation history occurred when the Association of Professional Flight Attendants at American Airlines (APFA), took unilateral action against the former TWA flight attendants by stripping them of all earned date of hire seniority from TWA.
In an interview with The Fort Worth Star Telegram, APFA President Laura Glading admitted APFA made a “mistake” and “screwed-up big time” by stapling the TWA members to the bottom of the seniority list. Ms. Glading has done nothing to remedy that mistake. APFA continues to cause direct financial harm to the former TWA attendants hoping they will retire or quit. Because the TWA attendants were laid off after 9/11 and unemployed for almost 10 years, they lost pension contributions, salary and benefits totaling more than $2 Billion. They must continue to work and many will until they are no longer physically able.

American recently offered a $40,000 lump sum buy-out to flight attendants. Over 2,250 accepted the offer. This company action provides the solution to the seniority problem that is simple and fair. There is no harm financially or otherwise to any current American flight attendant by integrating the remaining 950 former TWA members into their proper place on the seniority list now that 2,250 are departing. By the time 2,250 depart, every American flight attendant will move up the seniority list.Congress must demand that DOJ, DOT, and Labor, require this solution before any merger is finalized. APFA should not jeopardize a merger when it can quickly remedy its own mistake and avoid litigation on seniority and other questionable actions to spite the TWA attendants.

The litany of APFA injustices is too long to fully recount. Former TWA flight attendant Amy Ludwig started flying in 1969 and timely applied for the $40,000 buyout. Amy had stage 4 ovarian cancer. Because she was deprived of her seniority from 1969 to the acquisition in 2001, she could not depart with the first group leaving in December 2012.

She was assigned to depart in June 2013. She called APFA to ask if she could depart immediately because she might not survive until June. APFA responded “If you die before your departure date, you lose your money and your heirs will forfeit the money too.” Amy died December 18, 2012. Had she not been deprived of her seniority, she would have been one of the first to choose her departure date, not one of the last. APFA stopped the earned payout and Amy’s heirs have nothing.

To further disenfranchise the TWA flight attendants, APFA changed its constitution to require that furloughed employees pay full union dues. Because TWA was unemployed for years with little or no income, they accrued substantial arrearages. When they were recalled, APFA demanded that the dues be paid. Some owed well over a thousand dollars and most could not pay, placing the vast majority of TWA flight attendants in bad standing. This means that you are denied the right to vote in elections or contract offers, access information on the APFA website or go to Congress to voice your opinion.
Almost all the 950 TWA attendants who remain could not vote in the recent APFA election for president. That election was narrowly won by Ms. Glading by 150 votes in a runoff. The same Ms. Glading who said depriving TWA of seniority was a mistake that never should have happened. She would have been defeated by TWA votes and would not be representing APFA in the merger before Congress had she corrected the mistake.

American granted a 3% equity stake in the company to the APFA workforce upon emergence from bankruptcy. APFA devised a method to disenfranchise the TWA members. Ms. Glading made the motion to use a look-back period of W-2 earnings from American when all the TWA attendants were unemployed from American for some or all of the time. The result will give the TWA attendants an insignificant percentage of the distribution compared to those who were not laid off.

If APFA merges with the Association of Flight Attendants, (AFA) at US Airways, APFA insists that both groups receive their date of hire seniority. AFA is the largest flight attendant union in the country with over 60,000 members. The AFA president wrote to Chairman Rockefeller supporting the former TWA attendants and urged Congress to act because their own constitution recognizes that the date of hire is the only fair, impartial and blind way to merge seniority lists.

APFA is playing the clock to sweep their mistake that never should have happened under the rug. APFA knows the TWA attendants will be further damaged by being on the bottom of both carriers in the combined seniority list. The problem must be corrected to avoid workforce unrest that is detrimental to the newly merged company. TWA will be only 4% of the merged workforce. Congress must insist that APFA reverse its discrimination and admitted mistake or Congress will need to legislate an end to this discrimination that has caused so much pain to a small minority. Fix it now.
Daniels has been a TWA/AA flight attendant since 1973.

Read more: http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/economy-a-budget/288193-twa-flight-attendants-deserve-earned-seniority-restored-before-merger-is-approved#disqus_thread#ixzz2NlwkCitx

10 shocking secrets of flight attendants

By Heather Poole | The Week – 13 hrs ago

A seasoned flight attendant for a major carrier dishes 10 workplace secrets

1. If the plane door is open, we're not getting paid
You know all that preflight time where we're cramming bags into overhead bins? None of that shows up in our paychecks. Flight attendants get paid for "flight hours only." Translation: The clock doesn't start until the craft pushes away from the gate. Flight delays, cancellations, and layovers affect us just as much as they do passengers — maybe even more. Airlines aren't completely heartless, though. From the time we sign in at the airport until the plane slides back into the gate at our home base, we get an expense allowance of $1.50 an hour. It's not much, but it helps pay the rent.

2. Landing this gig is tough
Competition is fierce: When Delta announced 1,000 openings in 2010, it received over 100,000 applications. Even Harvard's acceptance rate isn't that low! All that competition means that most applicants who score interviews have college degrees — I know doctors and lawyers who've made the career switch. But you don't need a law degree to get your foot in the jetway door. Being able to speak a second language greatly improves your chances. So does having customer service experience (especially in fine dining) or having worked for another airline, a sign that you can handle the lifestyle. The 4 percent who do get a callback interview really need to weigh the pros and cons of the job. As we like to say, flight attendants must be willing to cut their hair and go anywhere. And if you can't survive on $18,000 a year, most new hires' salary, don't even think about applying.

3. We can be too tall or too short to fly
During Pan Am's heyday in the 1960s, there were strict requirements for stewardesses: They had to be at least 5-foot-2, weigh no more than 130 pounds, and retire by age 32. They couldn't be married or have children, either. As a result, most women averaged just 18 months on the job. In the 1970s, the organization Stewardesses for Women's Rights forced airlines to change their ways. The mandatory retirement age was the first thing to go. By the 1980s, the marriage restriction was gone as well.

These days, as long as flight attendants can do the job and pass a yearly training program, we can keep flying. As for weight restrictions, most of those disappeared in the 1990s. Today, the rules are about safety: Flight attendants who can't sit in the jump seat without an extended seat belt or can't fit through the emergency exit window cannot fly. The same goes for height requirements: We have to be tall enough to grab equipment from the overhead bins, but not so tall that we're hitting our heads on the ceiling. Today, that typically means between 5-foot-3 and 6-foot-1, depending on the aircraft.

4. We can be fired for bizarre reasons
Newly hired flight attendants are placed on strict probation for their first six months. I know one new hire who lost her job for wearing her uniform sweater tied around her waist. Another newbie got canned for pretending to be a full-fledged attendant so she could fly home for free. (Travel benefits don't kick in until we're off probation.) But the most surprising violation is flying while ill: If we call in sick, we aren't allowed to fly, even as a passenger on another airline. It's grounds for immediate dismissal.

5. Diet Coke is our nemesis!
Of all the drinks we serve, Diet Coke takes the most time to pour — the fizz takes forever to settle at 35,000 feet. In the time it takes me to pour a single cup of Diet Coke, I can serve three passengers a different beverage. So even though giving cans to first-class passengers is a big no-no, you'll occasionally spy 12 ounces of silver trimmed in red sitting up there.

6. If you try to sneak a dead body onto a plane, we will notice
You may have heard the story of a Miami passenger who tried to board a flight with his dead mother inside a garment bag. Why would someone do such a thing? Because it's expensive to transport human bodies! Prices vary by destination, but delivering a body on a flight can cost up to $5,000. Commercial carriers transport bodies across the country every day, and because the funeral directors who arrange these flights are offered air miles for their loyalty, they're not always concerned about finding the lowest fare.

Thankfully, I've never had someone sneak a deceased passenger on board, but my roommate did. She knew the man was dead the moment she saw him looking gray and slumped over in a wheelchair, even though his wife and daughter assured her he was just battling the flu. Midway through the flight, the plane had to make an unscheduled landing when it became apparent that no amount of Nyquil was going to revive him.

No one officially dies in-flight unless there's a doctor on board to make the pronouncement. On these very rare occasions, the crew will do everything possible to manage the situation with sensitivity and respect. Unfortunately, most flights are full, so it's not always possible to move an "incapacitated" passenger to an empty row of seats. Singapore Airlines is the most prepared. Its planes feature a "corpse cupboard," a compartment for storing a dead body if the situation arises.

7. We'll also notice if you try to join the Mile High Club
It's usually the long line of people waiting to use the bathroom that gives you away, and nine times out of 10, it's a passenger who asks the flight attendants to intervene. Strictly speaking, it's not against the law to join the Mile High Club. But it is against the law to disobey crew member commands. If we ask you to stop doing whatever it is you're doing, by all means, stop! Otherwise, you're going to have a very awkward conversation when you meet your cell mate.

8. We're the first line of defense against human trafficking
When I started flying, I never dreamed I'd be working with the police, but it's become an important part of the job. This new role started with Sandra Fiorini, an American Airlines flight attendant who testified to Congress about an 18-year-old male passenger carrying a newborn with its umbilical cord still attached. No mother in sight, just one bottle of milk and two diapers stuck in his pocket for the six-hour flight. When Fiorini reported her suspicions to the authorities, she got no response.
In 2007, Fiorini met Deborah Sigmund, founder of the organization Innocents at Risk, and they began working together to train airline employees on what to spot and who to call. In 2011, this translated into hundreds of flight attendants from different airlines volunteering to help police at the Super Bowl, a hotbed for trafficking prostitutes.

9. Seniority means shorter skirts
Our tenure on the job doesn't just determine which routes we fly and which days we get to take off; it also affects the hierarchy in our crashpad, an apartment shared by as many as 20 flight attendants. Seniority is the difference between top or lower bunk, what floor your bed is on, and just how far away your room is from noisy areas such as doors or stairwells.

Seniority even determines the length of our skirts — we can't hem them above a certain length until we're off probation. Afterward, it's OK to shorten the hem and show a little leg. Some of the friskier pilots take advantage of the long hems; they know that new hires tend to be more flattered by their advances than senior flight attendants. (One senior flight attendant I know intentionally left her skirt long just to keep these guys interested!)

10. You've never experienced extreme turbulence
More than 2 million people fly in the United States each day, and yet since 1980, only three people have died as a direct result of turbulence. Of those fatalities, two passengers weren't wearing their safety belts. During that same time period, the Federal Aviation Administration recorded just over 300 serious injuries from turbulence, and more than two-thirds of the victims were flight attendants. What do these numbers mean? As long as your seat belt is on, you're more likely to be injured by falling luggage than by choppy air.

Interestingly, on some airlines, a flight attendant's injuries in flight can't be officially classified as an on-duty injury unless it happens during what's known as "extreme turbulence" — where the captain loses control of the plane or the craft sustains structural damage. In both of those cases, the aircraft must be grounded and inspected. Because no one wants to ground a plane, captains are very hesitant to hand out the "extreme turbulence" label. A friend of mine who works closely with airline management said he's never seen a pilot label rough air as "extreme turbulence." So the next time you're nervous about some mid-flight bumps, just take a deep breath and remind yourself, "This isn't extreme!"

Heather Poole has worked for a major carrier for more than 15 years and is the author of Cruising Attitude: Tales of Crashpads, Crew Drama, and Crazy Passengers at 35,000 Feet.